Marian Van Landingham, the founding director of the Torpedo Factory Art Center and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1982 to 2005, has been named one of Virginia’s 2010 Women in History.

Alexandria turned green Saturday as thousands celebrated the 29th Annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. Spirits were high, and so was the temperature – a crisp 55 degrees with a cloudless blue sky.

Although the number of people who smoke cigarettes has continued to decline, hundreds of thousands of people in Virginia and the United States continue to light up every day. Virginia has the 12th lowest smoking rate in the nation. As of 2008, 2.4 million Virginians, about 40.5% of the population, have tried smoking. Nearly 60% have tried to quit and 40% continue to smoke. One in six Virginians, about 973,000 people, were smokers in 2008.

Following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, students at Bishop Ireton High School have spent the last month raising money and collecting shoes for Louverture Cleary School, BI’s sister school in Haiti. To date, Ireton students have raised $28,323 that will go to the Haitian Project and the Louverture Cleary school community. Half of the money came from tickets to the school’s Winter Ball; the remainder was collected from donations, $2 dress out days, cake walks, Drama Club benefit events, basketball game collections, and contributions from Blessed Sacrament School.

As Black History Month drew to a close, the Alexandria chapter of the NAACP invited the community to celebrate with a soul food tasting, music and a presentation well-known author and African scholar Dr. Ronald Walters.

Fairfax County Crime Solvers is asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the driver of a car that struck and killed a man on Wednesday, February 24. At around 3:30 a.m., police found the body of Efrain Flores-Vasquez, 49, of no fixed address, at Leesburg Pike at I-495.

When residents of Alexandria’s West End learned that Fairfax County was considering proposals to redevelop the Plaza at Landmark and the Smoot Lumber site, they asked why the City hadn’t informed them and why Alexandria leaders weren’t involved in the decision making process. A third proposed Fairfax County redevelopment on Vine Street will be considered during Alexandira’s Eisenhower West planning process, which is scheduled to begin next year.

“Idle minds are the devil’s workshop,” according to a popular proverb. No where is it more obvious than in jails, detention center or prisons.

The inmate services division of the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office has instituted unique monthly programs for the express purpose of encouraging inmates to broaden their education and skills while serving jail sentences.

They are big, bad, bowl-shaped, ugly and costly when your car hits one, which is easier to do these days. They are gaping potholes of the car-swallowing kind. Although they normally crop up when springtime approaches, potholes are already the bane of existence for metro area motorists, who are navigating around huge mounds of frozen ice and coping with streets and roads still constricted by unplowed and under-plowed snow.

“I can’t praise Rosalind Bovey too highly,” said former Carlyle House Board President Oscar Fitzgerald. “It seems like I have known her forever. She is very successful, persistent, has raised significant funds, and I am always impressed by her positive attitude.”

The public accolades are many including adjectives like amazing, energetic, persuasive, reasonable, and well organized. Bovey is admired particularly for her commitment to civic causes.